Artist: Hank Mobley Genre(s):
Jazz
Discography:
Dippin' Year: 2006
Tracks: 1
Reach Out Year: 2005
Tracks: 6
Soul Station Year: 1999
Tracks: 6
Vol 20 - Jimmy Raney Year: 1979
Tracks: 21
Poppin Year:
Tracks: 5
One of the Blue Note label's authoritative difficult bop artists, tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley remains somewhat underappreciated for his square, swinging dash. Any characterization of Mobley always begins with critic Leonard Feather's asseveration that he was the "middleweight champion of the tenor sax," meaning that his tonus wasn't as strong-growing and thick as John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins, merely neither was it as soft and cool as Stan Getz or Lester Young. Instead, Mobley's middle, "round" (as he described it) sound was controlled and even, apt over to subtlety kind of than intense displays of emotion. Even if he lacked the electric, mercurial qualities of the era's cracking tenor innovators, Mobley remained systematically strong passim virtually of his recording career. His solo lines were full of intricate rhythmical patterns that were delivered with spot-on preciseness, and he was no slouch harmonically either. As a charter member of Horace Silver's Jazz Messengers, Mobley helped inaugurate the difficult bop social movement: malarky that balanced sophistication and soul, complexness and earthy dangle, and whose loose anatomical structure allowed for extended improvisations. As a solo artist, he began recording for Blue Note in the latter half of the '50s, and hit his efflorescence in the first base half of the '60s with hard federal Bureau of Prisons cornerstones like
Individual Station,
No Room for Squares, and
A Caddy for Daddy.
Henry "Hank" Mobley was born on July 7, 1930, in Eastman, GA, and grew up generally in Elizabeth, NJ. Several kinsfolk members played forte-piano and/or church building organ, and Mobley himself learned piano as a tike. He switched to the saxophone at age 16, initially modeling his style on players like Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Don Byas, and Sonny Stitt. He shortly started playing professionally in the surface area, and built enough of a repute that trumpeter Clifford Brown recommended him for a job without having heard him play. That job was with Paul Gayten's Newark-based R&B band, which he joined in 1949, doubling as a composer. He deceased in 1951 and joined the house banding at a Newark nightspot, where he played with pianist Walter Davis, Jr. and backed some of the era's top jazz stars. That lED to a job with Max Roach, wHO hired both Mobley and Davis after acting with them; they all recorded together in early 1953, at one and only of the earlier roger Sessions to feature article Roach as a drawing card. Meanwhile, Mobley continued to gig around his home area, playing with the likes of Milt Jackson, Tadd Dameron, and J.J. Johnson, among others; he as well served two weeks in Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1953.
Mobley exhausted much of 1954 playing and recording with Dizzy Gillespie. He left hand in September to join pianist Horace Silver's mathematical group, which evolved into a quintet co-led by Art Blakey and dubbed the Jazz Messengers. Their groundbreaking ceremony first album for Blue Note, 1955's
Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, was a landmark in the genesis of difficult bebop, with its advanced solos and bright, most funky rhythms. Mobley lED his first session for Blue Note,
The Hank Mobley Quartet, in 1955, and recorded for Savoy and Prestige during 1956. In the middle of that year, the original lineup of the Jazz Messengers split, with Blakey retention the list and Silver forming a new group. Mobley stayed with Silver until 1957, by which time he had begun to record prolifically as a leader for Blue Note, complemental ashcan School albums' worth of material all over the adjacent 16 months. Some of his best sour, such as
Hank Mobley and His All Stars and
The Hank Mobley Quintet, was cut with a choice of one-time Messengers couple. Not all of his sessions were released at the clock time, only some began to appear as signification reissues in the '80s. Often composition his own material, Mobley was beginning to sincerely hit his stride with 1958's
Peckin' Time, when a worsening drug problem resulted in an hold back that took him off the scene for a year.
Upon returning to music in 1959, Mobley orientated himself by rejoining Art Blakey in the Jazz Messengers for a little period. His comeback session as a leader was 1960's graeco-Roman
Soul Station, near-universally acknowledged as his greatest recorded moment. Mobley cut two more high quality hard bop albums,
Roll Call and
Workout, over 1960-1961, as well as some other sessions that went unreleased at the time. In 1961, Mobley caught what looked to be a major interrupt when he was hired to supervene upon John Coltrane in Miles Davis' quintette. Unfortunately, the association was a stormy one; Mobley came under heavy criticism from the bandleader, and wound up departure in 1962. He returned to solo recording with 1963's
No Room for Squares, often tabbed as one of his best efforts, before drug and legal problems once more put him forbidden of military commission during 1964. Energized and focused upon his render, Mobley recorded extensively during 1965, showcasing a more or less harder-edged tone and an insightfulness for catchy, modal-flavored originals that challenged his sidemen. At the same time,
Dippin' establish a funkier soul-jazz sound starting to creep into his work, an approach that reached its peak on the infectious
A Caddy for Daddy afterward that yr.
Mobley recorded steady for Blue Note through and through the '60s, offer flimsy variations on his approach, and continued to seem as a sideman on a generous number of the label's other releases (especially haunt cooperator Lee Morgan). 1966's
A Slice of the Top launch Mobley fronting a slightly bigger band staged by Duke Pearson, though it went unissued until 1979. After newspaper clipping the straightforward
Third Season in 1967, Mobley embarked on a brief term of enlistment of Europe, where he performed with Slide Hampton. He returned to the U.S. to record the straight-ahead
Far Away Lands and
Hi Voltage that year, and well-tried his hand at commercially oriented jazz-funk on 1968's
Get through Out. Afterward, he took Hampton's advice and returned to Europe, where he would remain for the succeeding 2 years. 1969's
The Flip was recorded in Paris, and Mobley returned to the States to star his final session for Blue Note,
Cerebration of Home, in 1970 (it wasn't released until 10 days later). He afterward co-led a group with piano player Cedar Walton, which recorded the fantabulous
Breakthrough in 1972.
Woefully, that would show to be Mobley's last major feat. Health problems forced him to retire in 1975, when he colonized in Philadelphia. He was hardly able to regular spiel his horn for dread of rupturing a lung; by the morning of the '80s, he was essentially an invalid. In 1986, he mustered up the energy to work on a modified base with Duke Jordan; however, he died of pneumonia non long after, on May 30, 1986. During Mobley's heyday, virtually critics tended to compare him unfavourably to Sonny Rollins, or brush off him for not being the groundbreaker that Coltrane was. However, in the years that followed Mobley's death, Blue Note concentrated federal Bureau of Prisons enjoyed a positivist reassessment; with it came a new appreciation for Mobley's extremely developed talents as a composer and soloist, rather of a centering on his shortcomings.
